EFFECTS OF SEQUESTRATION STARTING TO BECOME CLEAR

Some 35,000 local federal workers preparing for unpaid furloughs

The fog surrounding the San Diego region’s share of $85 billion in sequestration spending cuts — estimated by a local economist at $2 billion or more — is slowly lifting.

Elements of the emerging portrait include closed airport traffic control towers at the Ramona Airport and Brown Field, and at least three San Diego-based Navy vessels staying portside rather than going to sea.

At kitchen tables across the county, an estimated 35,000 federal workers are preparing for unpaid furlough days.

At Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, planners are forming a lineup for the annual air show in October that likely won’t have Blue Angels soaring in the local skies.

“We’re planning on a MAGTEF (Marine air-ground task force) demonstration and maybe bolstering that with an even heavier Marine Corps presence,” said a base spokesman, Lt. Tyler Balzer.

Last week, federal agencies were rushing to complete their plans for operating with less money between now and the Sept. 30 end of the federal fiscal year. About half the cuts are coming from the Pentagon, with the rest spread across the federal government.

The Department of Defense said it will furlough most of its 800,000 workers nationwide for 14 days starting in June, including about 30,000 at local Marine and Navy bases.

The lower federal spending may eventually amount to more than $2 billion for the region, according to economist Kelly Cunningham at the National University System’s Institute for Policy Research in San Diego.

“It’s going to have a big impact here,” he said. “Federal and military spending is a critical part of the economy and I think it is going to slow our growth, possibly cutting off a point or two of growth.”

Another local economist, Marney Cox at the San Diego Association of Governments, said the impact from a general slowdown in defense work from sequestration, the end of the Iraq War and gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan may lead to an uptick in the unemployment rate.

At Navy Region Southwest, spokesman Brian O’Rourke ﻿said most if not all the command’s 25,700 civilian workers are facing the 14-day furloughs set to begin in June.

Thousands more employees at facilities such as the Fleet Readiness Center and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SPAWAR) are in the same situation.

At Miramar, Camp Pendleton and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, slightly more than 2,515 civilian workers are subject to furlough. The bulk of them, nearly 1,800, earn their paychecks at Camp Pendleton, said 1st Lt. Ryan Finnegan, a spokesman on the base.

“But we’re not looking at any training cuts, and no gyms or schools or other services are being closed,” he said. “We don’t know for sure yet, but what we’re also probably going to see is some deferred maintenance and things like that.”

Softening the blow for the Pentagon, which was slated to absorb $46 billion of the cuts, was a spending bill adopted earlier this month that lowered that figure by close to $6 billion.

Back in San Diego, the Department of Justice faces a hiring freeze and a 14-day furlough for most workers. Federal court operations in San Diego are expected to go on as normal, according to a spokesman.

Other federal departments planning worker furloughs of seven to 13 or 14 days include the Transportation, Homeland Security, Environmental Protection, and Housing and Urban Development agencies.

Already staying home are the crews from the Rentz, a guided missile frigate, the frigate Thatch and the submarine Jefferson City after Navy brass canceled their scheduled deployments in recent days because of sequestration constraints.

Also constrained is the Transportation Security Administration and Customs and Border Patrol. The agencies are furloughing workers, some starting as early as Saturday, and Border Patrol agents have been told that no overtime will be allowed.

No overtime also means that agents tracking unauthorized immigrant crossings will suspend those missions if they extend beyond eight hours and no replacement teams are available, said Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents 17,000 agents in collective bargaining.

The reduction in spending for social service programs, including those administered by San Diego County with federal dollars, isn’t having much of an effect yet, said county spokesman Michael Workman.

“It’s in the next fiscal cycle where we may start to see cuts,” Workman said.

And after Friday, the air traffic control tower at the Ramona Airport will be shuttered as part of the Federal Aviation Administration’s response to $600 million in sequestration cuts to its budget. San Diego’s Brown Field will meet the same fate on May 5 as the FAA shuts down air traffic control towers at more than 100 small airports across the country.

Some congressional representatives have been among those issuing dire warnings about sequestration. Regardless of their stance on the spending cuts, virtually all of them agree that sequestration is wrong.